Question: How is a shooting star formed?

Scott Lawrie answered on 14 Mar 2016:

Hello Jack! A shooting star is made from anything reasonably big hitting the Earth from space. These things are moving very fast and heat up as they clobber the air particles in our atmosphere. They get VERY hot and that makes them glow so we can see them. Anything from asteroids to bits of spaceship can turn into a shooting star if it falls to Earth!

The Earth sometimes moves through a bit of space full of little asteroids and then we get lots of shooting stars. Have a look out at night sky in August for the ‘Perseid’ meteor shower – it’s quite a light-show!